Slow Burner

by William Haggard

‘We have not, and I don’t think I shall. I doubt if Sir Jeremy is interested in the mechanics of security, the build-up as it were. What he wants is a cast-iron case, preferably something which will allow the Executive to take action in the ordinary way. He would like above all things to keep out of it himself. And as a second best, and for Bates it would be a very poor second, he would want something which he could take to his Minister on a plate. But in either case it would have to be cast iron.’ Charles Russell’s handsome face creased into something approaching a grimace. ‘Damn Bates,’ he said explosively.

  William Nichol smiled. ‘You’re in a lamentable temper, Charles,’ he said. ‘But I sympathize.’ He smiled again—almost, now, a grin. ‘For myself,’ he added, ‘I need a little relaxation. I need to be taken out of myself. May I use your telephone?’

  ‘But of course.’

  Nichol picked up the red telephone. He gave a number and there was a moment’s delay. Charles Russell had heard the number, and his face was blankly astonished. ‘Bates,’ said the telephone finally.

  ‘Good morning. Nichol here. Would you do me a favour?’

  ‘Most certainly.’

  ‘I’m in London unexpectedly. Would it be very inconsiderate to ask you to lend me your car?’

  The voice on the telephone appeared for an instant to hesitate. ‘Of course,’ it said at length.

  ‘I’m more than obliged. I’m at Russell’s, by the way.’

  ‘My car will be there in five minutes.’

  ‘It is really very kind of you. For a couple of hours, then? I shall need the driver, of course.’

  ‘Naturally . . . In five minutes.’

  ‘Thank you again.’ Nichol replaced the receiver. ‘What the devil . . . ?’ Russell asked.

  Nichol waved airily. ‘I told you I needed a little relaxation,’ he repeated. ‘Specifically, a little pleasant company. Feminine company, Charles. I am taking Mary Parton to luncheon.’ He waved again; he picked up his hat and coat and the door closed behind him with a firm snap. Russell heard his footsteps down the stairs. He seemed to be taking them very quickly.

  Charles Russell whistled. Boys will be boys, he was thinking. But sometimes they could be eminent physicists, and that was the devil.

  William Nichol swept Mary Parton into Bernardo’s and to a table. A little triangular board upon it said ‘Reserved’, and this Nichol handed to the waiter with a couple of sentences in his own language. The waiter looked surprised, but he bowed; he put the reservation card into his pocket. William turned to Mary who accepted gin and tonic. He returned to the waiter. ‘Whisky for me, please,’ he said shortly. ‘Double whisky. And very little soda.’

  Mary Parton was in turn surprised. It hadn’t been her impression of. William Nichol that he was a man to drink whisky before meals. William caught her expression. ‘I’m in a hideous temper,’ he apologized.

  ‘You certainly don’t look very pleased with life.’

  ‘So I’m taking you to lunch.’

  ‘Which isn’t very complimentary.’

  ‘On the contrary, it’s the biggest I can pay you.’

  Mary Parton smiled. ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘Now tell me about it.’

  William Nichol drank his whisky. ‘It’s nothing, I suppose,’ he explained, ‘but it’s intolerable. There’s been some trouble at Colton. It’s inexplicable, so everybody is guessing. Suspecting. Mary, I loathe suspicion.’

  ‘I can understand that.’

  ‘People being watched. Telephones tapped . . . It isn’t something to live with.’

  ‘Not for you, no.’

  ‘I’m tired of it,’ William said vehemently. He recovered himself a little, ordering a meal with his usual care. ‘I think I have reached my limit.’ The words were formal and they were spoken formally. He hesitated a moment. ‘I think I shall resign,’ he said finally.

  ‘But you can’t do that.’

  ‘Why ever not?’

  They’d never let you.’

  ‘They couldn’t stop it if I insisted. They do have strings on me, of course, but hardly that one. Strings . . . I hate them. They could stop my going abroad, for instance—myself and a handful of others. Yes, they could stop my going abroad if that was what I was thinking of.’

  ‘And are you?’ Mary asked.

  ‘Not really. The country would do as well in certain circumstances. A little fishing, some rough shooting . . .’

  ‘You’d bore yourself to death,’ Mary said with decision. ‘I’m not so sure. I’m bored already in a sense. I’m supposed to be a scientist, you know, but I haven’t really been that for years. They’ve got what they want and there they stop.’ William Nichol smiled grimly. ‘I’m not much interested in engineering,’ he added.

  ‘You’d be bored to death,’ Mary Parton repeated.

  ‘Perhaps . . . Alone, yes.’ William Nichol took her hand. ‘You wouldn’t care to come with me, I suppose?’ he asked.

  Mary left her hand in his. ‘You’re a very nice man,’ she said. ‘I—I think I could love you.’

  ‘Then come with me.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  William, suddenly, was aware that she was crying. ‘Why not?’ he asked. He was very gentle.

  ‘My husband . . . Ellis . . . he’ll never agree to a divorce.’

  ‘And would that matter?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Even abroad? I might manage it after all.’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  Mary Parton withdrew her hand; she rose a little shakily. William walked with her to the door; he put her into Sir Jeremy’s black Humber. ‘I’m coming up again on Thursday,’ he said unhappily. ‘A meeting at the Society. I suppose . . .’

  ‘I think it’s better not.’

  Mary Parton let in the clutch and William watched her drive away; he returned to his table, and the waiter was at his elbow. ‘Brandy,’ he said curtly. ‘Bring the bottle.’

  Tuesday afternoons, at half past four precisely, were one of Sir Jeremy’s fixed times for calling upon his Minister. He advanced and offered his ceremonial hand. The Minister took it with equal ceremony. A messenger brought in tea, and Gabriel Palliser poured it. ‘Great Powers,’ he remarked reflectively, ‘need a hinterland. Lebensraum. That Man was right.’

  ‘

  Sir Jeremy was surprised. His opinion of his Minister was that he was a pragmatist, a man of a competent, an almost arrogant realism. He hadn’t, before, heard him theorize, and that he was doing so was a little alarming. Sir Jeremy collected himself.

  But Gabriel Palliser hadn’t finished. ‘A hinterland,’ he repeated. ‘And of course we do not have one. There are people called demographers, I believe—they profess to know about populations. Some of them tell me that the population of this country is rising and some of them say that in a generation it will have fallen. The fact remains that at the moment it is too many. Too many, that is, to feed from our own resources.’ Palliser drank a little of his tea. ‘Of course we could reconquer Ireland,’ he said, ‘and perhaps we shall have to.’ He raised his hand as Sir Jeremy appeared about to speak. ‘No,’ he said, ‘you mustn’t assume that I am speaking entirely in levity; you must remember that my mother was an Ulsterwoman.’ He finished his cup of tea. ‘But the trouble about reconquests,’ he went on, ‘is not only that nowadays they are unfashionable but also that they are pointless unless you are prepared to liquidate—that is the term, I believe—to liquidate the original population. Which I fear we should never be. So Ireland seems safe enough.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Sir Jeremy said. He did not quite know what else was expected of him.

  Then if we have no hinterland, no Lebensraum to raise our requirements, we must buy them. We must export. That is a banality perhaps, but it is not the less true for that. And in an increasingly competitive world there are just two ways of exporting successfully in the face of your competitors: you can work harder than they do or you can enjoy an advantage over them. Hard work, as a political policy, isn’t enormous
ly popular. Which leaves us with advantage. Which leaves us in turn either with the exclusive knowledge of Slow Burner, or with Slow Burner in the hands of our competitors. When of course it ceases to be an advantage.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Sir Jeremy said again. He was thinking that his Minister had taken a very long time to come to the point; it wasn’t at all his usual form. It occurred to him that he was being put at ease, prepared for something. He became warier than ever.

  ‘So that this business at Dipley is extremely worrying. I have seen the Minutes of the Commission’s last meeting—I’m sorry I couldn’t attend, by the way—and I have seen Russell’s latest report. His opinion seems to be that this apparatus is a blind. And I agree with it.’

  ‘It isn’t conclusive,’ Sir Jeremy ventured.

  ‘I agree—as a matter of dialectic it is not. Nevertheless I am satisfied.’ Gabriel Palliser paused for a moment; he seemed to be choosing his words. ‘I am satisfied,’ he repeated, ‘that this business at Dipley is a blind by one of the dozen or so men whose knowledge of Slow Burner we cannot safely allow out of the country. And by no other.’

  ‘We cannot be quite sure of that.’

  ‘But I think we can. For if we assume that somebody outside the charmed circle had somehow stumbled upon this thing, why should he wish to plant it? He wouldn’t suppose that his movements were of any interest to Security, so why should he wish to distract attention?’

  ‘I see,’ Sir Jeremy said slowly. He was thinking that he should have thought of that himself.

  ‘You are with me? Excellent. Then we are down to finding out who has done it. And that,’ Palliser added quietly, ‘presents its particular problems.’ His voice became a half-tone less gentle. ‘I notice you have made me no recommendation.’

  ‘We have nothing to go on—nothing but suspicion.’

  ‘Suspicion of some dozen men. None of whom has attempted to leave the country; none of whom has recently been reported in any dubious contact; and all of whom are no doubt being discreetly watched day and night. Is that correct?’

  ‘As I understand it,’ Sir Jeremy said.

  ‘About a dozen men—Security has a little list, no doubt. And all of them equally suspect or innocent. Any of them, all of them. I notice from the Commission’s Minutes that Doctor Nichol very properly drew attention to the fact that he was not himself less suspect than any other.’

  ‘Yes,’ Sir Jeremy said. He seemed to be considering. ‘Yes,’ he repeated deliberately.

  Gabriel Palliser rose, walking with his Permanent Secretary to the door. He put his hand upon his shoulder; he had never before done that. ‘You have had a wonderful career,’ he said. ‘We are all in your debt. I wish you good fortune.’

  Sir Jeremy returned to his room. That was broad enough, he was thinking—broad enough in all conscience. Somewhere outside the Ministry, along the Embankment, a taxi blew its horn. Sir Jeremy smiled grimly. The noise was a little old-fashioned. In a world of electric sirens, of sirens abusive and of sirens minatory, the bulb horn of a taxi blew with a note almost nostalgic. Sir Jeremy did not know why taxis still carried them—the police had some very curious regulations about taxis, he remembered, or perhaps it was no more than an obstinate convention. Whatever it was it was a horn . . . a hunting horn. The pack was getting uncomfortably close. First Elton, he told himself, and now his Minister. He had been warned.

  Sir Jeremy sat down. He began to consider William Nichol, for he had in his hand a card which he flattered himself was not in the conventional pack of fifty-two. He hugged it with a certain affection. So far it hadn’t been useful, but it was reassuring. It was reassuring that even the virtuous were occasionally lucky.

  For Sir Jeremy would have been quite ready to admit that for once luck, not virtue, not even hard work, had been operative. He had been to a meeting at the Home Office and, casually, almost as a courtesy, he had been asked his opinion upon a file lying on the Secretary’s desk. It had concerned a man called Schmidt. Schmidt had been a citizen of a state which no longer existed to claim him, and he had come to England as a refugee. But there had been thousands of Schmidts: hundreds had been quietly shipped to the less popular parts of the Commonwealth, the areas which the Commonwealth’s own peoples saw no profit in populating. Schmidt himself had contrived to remain.

  But he was not content. A solid man, a natural citizen, he was still unnaturalized, and he felt his condition of statelessness more severely than did the intellectuals and the artisans who had formed the bulk of the refugees. It nagged and it gnawed; it was a sense of personal loss; it gave him no peace. His ambition was British citizenship, and he had made a dozen applications to acquire it.

  It was the case of this man which his brother Secretary had asked Sir Jeremy to glance at; he would, he had said, be grateful for a fresh mind upon the problem. Sir Jeremy read the summary quickly. A very ordinary case, he thought—the man was fortunate still to be here. A decent enough fellow, no doubt, and politically beyond question, but wine-waiting wasn’t a particularly valuable skill—certainly not one to merit special consideration. Sir Jeremy had said so and had taken his leave.

  But something of the case remained with him. For one thing he sometimes ate at Bernardo’s, and it might be interesting to notice the wine waiter on the next occasion he went there; and for another he had observed that Schmidt, though his condition and prospects were hardly enviable, was at least not without the consolations of feminine company. Her name, he remembered, had been Gretl. An unusual name, it had struck him, for a woman from quite so far East in what had once been Europe.

  Later he had remembered that William Nichol had a housekeeper called Gretl.

  He had told himself that the coincidence was not significant: there were regiments of Gretls. Nevertheless he had thought it worth while to make an inquiry—that he had originated it had been studiously concealed—about Nichol’s housekeeper. He had told himself that he was wasting his time; he had assured himself that he was entirely sceptical; but somehow he hadn’t been altogether surprised when he had been told that Nichol’s Gretl was also Schmidt’s.

  Sir Jeremy had seen the possibilities at once, and the drawbacks. Any advantage of his knowledge which he could take would be very improper. The Cloak and Dagger—they were for the professionals. Personally he despised them, and the amateur in that metier was beneath contempt. Sir Jeremy Bates couldn’t, imaginably, be caught playing at cops and robbers. Nevertheless he had eaten another dinner at Bernardo’s. Schmidt, he had decided, looked reliable; he was a reasonable risk. He had told him that in certain circumstances he would be prepared to consider using any influence which he might possess to obtain for him his naturalization . . . What circumstances? Oh, nothing special, it must be understood, nothing specific. But if Gretl could see her way to convey to him anything of interest which occurred at Colton, then he would not be forgetful of it.

  Sir Jeremy had told himself a dozen times that all of this was nonsense; but he had never entirely convinced himself. In his private religion coincidence had still a certain magic. This was a talisman, an earnest that the gods were not always unmindful of the righteous.

  He summoned his private secretary, glancing at his beautiful clock. He smiled, reminding himself that he hadn’t examined it, hadn’t in fact played with it, for weeks. That was a pleasure anticipated for the week-end. The fine old Quare told him that it was nearly seven. That was a little late perhaps, but not too late for Marshall. Sir Jeremy had no doubts that he would still be at work. He smiled a little acidly, for he had decided that Marshall was an admirable private secretary; he was conscientious and he was conditioned. And no more. To be the Secretary’s secretary was, for a comparatively junior official, something of a plum; it was a foot upon the higher ladder. Marshall could reasonably hope to advance himself. But Sir Jeremy had no intention of especially advancing him, for he had long since concluded that Marshall was no better than the average of his contemporaries. He had judgement of course, which meant that
he would take no action unless he was obliged to, and in the Service that was important. Nevertheless Sir Jeremy did not consider him outstanding. Beta Double Plus, he had decided.

  Naturally he had given no hint of this to Marshall. Marshall continued to work an eleven-hour day.

  Sir Jeremy turned to him as he came in. He spoke, as he always spoke, politely; but he left no doubt as to his wishes. ‘Book for me, please,’ he said, ‘a table at Bernardo’s. Tonight. In about an hour. I shall be alone.’

  At Bernardo’s Sir Jeremy was received with consideration. He noticed with satisfaction that Schmidt was on duty and ordered from him a half-bottle of claret. He chose it by the price—not a very expensive one, for that would have been extravagant, but something whose position upon the Wine List of a reputable restaurant was a guarantee that at least it would do him no harm. Schmidt bowed with deference, thinking that if he had been Sir Jeremy he would have chanced a whole bottle. Sir Jeremy drank his soup and dealt—with fair appetite, he considered, after the events of the day—with a grouse and with Camembert cheese. He ordered coffee and was drinking it when he was aware that Schmidt was beside his table. ‘A glass of brandy, sir?’ he was suggesting.

  ‘No thank you,’ Sir Jeremy said at once. He caught as he spoke a gesture of Schmidt’s hand as it rested for a moment upon the Wine List on the table. It was a handsome Wine List bound in embossed morocco, and between its covers protruded the comer of a folded sheet of paper. Sir Jeremy felt for a moment a pricking which had been a stranger to him for years. It was excitement. ‘Oh, very well,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I will. I leave it to you.’

  Schmidt bowed again and went for the brandy. He left the Wine List upon the table. Sir Jeremy took a letter from his pocket and opened the List; he laid the letter upon it, smoothing it with the side of his hand, reading it with an appearance of interest, though he had already done so at his breakfast; then he picked it up and returned it to his pocket again. Schmidt’s note went with it.

  Sir Jeremy considered that he was behaving with a competence positively professional. No Cloak and Dagger man, he flattered himself, nobody trained for a lifetime in these conventions, could have done it more adroitly. He was pleased with himself. His brandy came to the table and he drank it without visible impatience. He asked for his bill and that a taxi should be called for him. He left an adequate tip and gave to Schmidt a smile which was friendly but in no way more. There was a light inside the taxi and Sir Jeremy switched it on. He opened Schmidt’s letter and read it. Schmidt wrote a large and careful hand. There is nothing from Colton,’ the note said, ‘but Doctor Nichol has himself been lunching here. He was lunching with a lady. He was speaking of resigning, and of leaving the country.’